Latest WPC Update:Initial bring up boards are on order. The EE is also doing a local bring up board to be fabbed on Sunday in Seattle. WPC Pool is nearly done should be ready for soft opening next week. Website & Provisioning Server will be tested this coming week ready to roll out as soon as the design and software / firmware is ready for public download. Wasp P0rn:Note this image taken from the Wasp 2 x A1 gerbers bring up board that will be used for SW/FW development.  Hive P0rn:Note that the Hive has changed somewhat this is an older version of the beta design but you can see the modular bracing concept. 
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I just got word that the next announcement is now expected to be given 'after the first week of March' and that 'everything is still on track'.
So don't hold your breath for an announcement today or tomorrow, but I feel that said announcement will be the publication of the final specifications and the details on how to order gen3 chips.
Nice timing. I will certainly be eager to get these into a Wasp. |
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Wasp Update: Board is completed. We have moved to onto the thieving tests and layout. Example of Thieving:  Copper dots (or grid/solid fill) are used mainly to balance the thermal properties of the board,
to minimize twist and warp as the board goes through the thermal cycling associated with reflow and
improving yield.
A secondary purpose for them is to reduce the amount of copper that needs to be etched away
from the board, balancing the etching rates across the board and helping to make the etching solution
last longer.
If the PCB designer did not explicitly "pour" copper fill into the open areas of the board's outer layers,
the fabrication house will often add the small disconnected dots, because these will have the least effect
on the electrical properties of the board.
The reaction rate of any etching process is limited by local current densities, access of the reactants into
the reaction area and clearance of the reaction products away from the reaction area. Since board etching
is essentially a planar or two dimensional process this places further limits on etching performance with
reactant delivery and reaction products actively interfering with each other for access to the surface.
While always present in processes, where the problem arises is in the differential etch rates across the board.
This can cause thin traces to be etched at a different rate than wider traces. For example, etching a relief
from around a fine trace within a background of a ground plane is very different in loading than etching a
thin trace with no background ground plane.
This can be corrected for by ensuring that in the design the pattern density remains fairly constant per
unit area across the board. Thieving is one way to do this. Some manufacturers will actually place
sacrificial elements within the tanks and along side the board to ensure proper yield of different line
thicknesses.
Mixing and agitation of the tanks during etch will also help mitigate the differential etch issues. Then the EE will get in contact with Orcad to ensure that the negative plane ground remains out of the edge connector area, and ensure that all the ground vias are in fact connecting. Pictures of the Wasp design will be forthcoming after this is done meaning we will have bring up boards soon. Although this has been a long and hard process we are happy that our EE team has finally got something to produce and if it weren't for the latest buggy version of Orcard/Allegro we would have been here 3 possibly 4 weeks ago. There is still plenty to do firmware wise as well as testing prototype boards but we are optimistic we have turned the corner and will move our A1 chips into our own production prototype run miners for the WPC. Meaning we will be releasing the designs for licensing at the same time. We will update more on this next week after our meeting on Saturday. We hope to get a few things working like our website and WPC pool next week or the week after. |
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I believe price and quantity was an issue. Again though we will work on anything into a wasp if there are reasonable prices and quantities of ASICs available.
Bicknellski , There is no such thing like reasonable prices and quantities in ASIC world. This is monopoly. I can fully understand how big and risky the investment to manufacture a single ASIC chip is. But i can not understand the demand. We are ready to pay any price like it is a drug and our life depends on it. And unless we as community act as one and refuse to pay ridiculous margins to chip suppliers nothing will change. I am trying to say that you have to be prepared to work on everything upfront with loss in terms of time invested and money. Then wait for your moment to come. I wish you and your project success. There is reasonable there is price gouging. We might agree on the idea of "monopoly" if there was only one fabricator of ASIC chips. We are working on everything upfront. The designs we release are our best efforts to get boards married to ASICs that give the best value given the market. There really is no reason to fabricate 110nm Avalon Gen I Wasps given there is no ready supply of chips. What is left of the community at this point of DIYers need to pool resources and build an ASIC chip that is Open Source so that we can continue working on miners. Otherwise the "monopolies" will continue. Chip prices are our concern. WPC members are very concerned and they will be interested in making boards locally. So as a design team we want to make sure that the WPC members and the community get the best deal they can. There is really no reason to build with chips that are over priced unless someone wants to forward chips to us and then we can make miners fit that chip. Given the difficulty that Bitmine is having say with the A1 it is interesting that our alternative open source designs or others could be used to bolster their own stable of miners. We are not just dumping designs on the market we are keen as members in the WPC to be active in cloud mining, pools as well as miner design which means we look at chip prices and adapt to the market. Sounds great expect "Chip prices are our concern" unless you are not planning to be an asic manufacturer. I am looking closely to chip prices - Bitfury gen1 chips 3GH top 17 USD if i recall correctly the info from yesterday. Great adaption. Avalon2 2500/13BTC = 0.0052 each x 580 USD = 3USD for 1.8 GH BTC ROI is 6 weeks away just to pay chip price And so on. Avalon Gen II not really that cost effective, BitFury at 17 USD is not the best pricing as I said we were hoping for something that was more competitive. $ per GH/s is the coming down but these "old" chips certainly haven't really come down enough have they to meet what say the Minion or A1 chips costs or have I missed the numbers? We have Bitfury chips and will make a BitFury Wasp after we clear the A1 off the decks first. And as I edited you may have missed it we are also in talks for chips that are not even on the radar here in BitCointalk land so we prefer to move forward rather than look backward at chips that are no longer price point or efficiency competitive. Asicminers potentially new chips might be great as well but let us see if they release or sell those. |
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I believe price and quantity was an issue. Again though we will work on anything into a wasp if there are reasonable prices and quantities of ASICs available.
Bicknellski , There is no such thing like reasonable prices and quantities in ASIC world. This is monopoly. I can fully understand how big and risky the investment to manufacture a single ASIC chip is. But i can not understand the demand. We are ready to pay any price like it is a drug and our life depends on it. And unless we as community act as one and refuse to pay ridiculous margins to chip suppliers nothing will change. I am trying to say that you have to be prepared to work on everything upfront with loss in terms of time invested and money. Then wait for your moment to come. I wish you and your project success. Thanks, There is reasonable there is price gouging. We might agree on the idea of "monopoly" if there was only one fabricator of ASIC chips. We are working on everything upfront. The designs we release are our best efforts to get boards married to ASICs that give the best value given the market. There really is no reason to fabricate 110nm Avalon Gen I Wasps given there is no ready supply of chips. What is left of the community at this point of DIYers need to pool resources and build an ASIC chip that is Open Source so that we can continue working on miners. Otherwise the "monopolies" will continue. Chip prices are our concern. WPC members are very concerned and they will be interested in making boards locally. So as a design team we want to make sure that the WPC members and the community get the best deal they can. There is really no reason to build with chips that are over priced unless someone wants to forward chips to us and then we can make miners fit that chip. Given the difficulty that Bitmine is having say with the A1 it is interesting that our alternative open source designs or others could be used to bolster their own stable of miners. We are not just dumping designs on the market we are keen as members in the WPC to be active in cloud mining, pools as well as miner design which means we look at chip prices and adapt to the market. First and foremost this is not about the profit at this point. We are looking to start with a design that will change the way miners are brought to market. We are not racing to be first with an A1 because there are some pretty nasty pitfalls pushing these chips to boards without a few respins of the boards. You I am sure are aware of this with Marto's boards and watching what Bitmine is going through with their boards. We are not releasing anything until we are happy and are ready to put our own A1 chips we purchased on our boards. This being our first run is challenging but our goal is not a single one off board as you well know we are looking at the Black Arrow chips coming out and we have lines on other chips not even being discussed in this forum as well. |
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megabigpower.com just added chips for $15 each, 2700 available.... still refuse to price 25ghs hashing boads according to difficulty and other miners on the market..... just ordered 2 more antminers with the money i had ear marked for bitfury expansion....  Ya 15$ is too high really. Was hoping to see a proper discount. We don't need to order chips we have enough to prototype a Wasp after we are done with the A1. If more chips are still available in March we will probably have a BitFury Wasp available but not sure how many people will be interested in building those. Antminer is certainly cleaning up. Shipping as soon as you pay the way it has to be. Have you guys tried getting your hands on Bitmain Antminer chips?  It would be nice if you could use them in your project as well  I believe price and quantity was an issue. Again though we will work on anything into a wasp if there are reasonable prices and quantities of ASICs available. |
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Why 16, when you already have ref.design for 8, and 8 is easier to cool...
Even when you think about immersion cooling, if enything goes wrong, your whole chain (16) goes offline...
Wouldn't it then be smarter to stick with 8 ?
16 was just a number I pulled from thin air As for the technical challenge: with the experience collected so far, I'd say once you have an 8-chip chain working, it is not a huge step to move to 16 chips. At least from the A1 side, I don't understand the DCDC part of it to state it would be easy. The immersion cooling idea follows DaT's approach here, where due to the high costs of the fluid it is essential to stuff as much hashing power into as little volume as possible. I think one could get a 4x4 A1 matrix onto a 10x10cm^2 PCB and stack them with 1cm distance. Resulting in a 6kW burner in a 1 liter cube. That would be more of a fun than a serious project and I proposed this to be added as a challenge for Bitmine's planned design contest - which for obvious reasons was put at the back of the priority queue and might never leave the announcement phase  Takers? I'd supply the chips and the fluid. Ice Wasp is something we are keen on doing... just need to get our Wasps finished first. |
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Mail fraud... tsk tsk BFL.
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megabigpower.com just added chips for $15 each, 2700 available.... still refuse to price 25ghs hashing boads according to difficulty and other miners on the market..... just ordered 2 more antminers with the money i had ear marked for bitfury expansion.... Ya 15$ is too high really. Was hoping to see a proper discount. We don't need to order chips we have enough to prototype a Wasp after we are done with the A1. If more chips are still available in March we will probably have a BitFury Wasp available but not sure how many people will be interested in building those. Antminer is certainly cleaning up. Shipping as soon as you pay the way it has to be. |
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Hello
If i buy k16s 0.3(?maybe) klondikedesign.com and use gen2 avalon and write jipiju's firmware
Is it work?
I wouldn't order anything from klondikedesign.com if I were you (not sure why the store is still up...). Chris still owes me over 8 BTC. Anyone hear from him lately? I have not. Not since he posted. Time to get him to respond again. |
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How are you getting that much hashing power out of so few bitfury chips?
I
BitFury Wasp Prototype
+ 16 to 24 chips for 300 gh/s to 440 gh/s depending on the configuration.
+ 4U Server configuration
+ Design for the power on the Wasp currently being down so 3d renders for the prototype are a week away.
+ By December the prototype testing video should be out.
+ By December the prototypes shipped to a datacenter for longer term testing and troubleshooting.
+ The DIY & Licenced Production could start as early as January for these units should there be a market for them.
We are using A1 Chips. No bitfury chips currently in our design we had to shelve the multiple chip design for the prototypes and go with the A1s as we have that as priority for the WPC have chips in hand and we need them made into miners ASAP. We have lost weeks fighting with the CAD software so we have had to drop a few things to get things done sooner. We will probably revisit and build a Bitfury Wasp if chips go back on sale. Still none to see right? 4 Chip 4U Modular Design25 gh/s per chip. 4 chips per Wasp. 8 Wasps per Hive. 32 chips x 25 Gh/s = 800 Gh/s estimate 4U (Our module holds the Hive and the Wasps and will fit 4U.) 6 Chip 5U Modular Design
25 Gh/s per chip. 6 chips per Wasp. 8 Wasps per Hive. 48 chips x 25 Gh/s = 1200 Gh/s. We are looking to work on the "modules" and an Ice Wasp that could potentially allow for overclocking up to the 40 Gh/s if we can keep the Wasps cool enough. We will keep everyone informed as we proceed with that. We are still keen on getting hold of Black Arrow chips and work those into our larger 5U Wasp concept. |
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Thanks!
Please contact Beastlymac via PM he will put you on the list to keep you in the loop on when we expect to release the gerbers and the BOM as well as the firmware and software to run the miners. Note that we are merely licensing our miners out others are producing these for the marketplace. If you would like to sit in at next weeks meeting with the EE and the rest of the WPC then contact Beastlymac and he can arrange it.
Our meeting yesterday was somewhat fruitful but there will be weeks not days until we have something to show that is production worthy. It seems many who are producing their own variants of the A1 miners are running into any number of issues with power and the PCB layout. It is a tricky one this mofo that anyone doing a design can atest to. From what I can surmise the only one that has "shipped" an A1 product based miner is Marto74. It goes without saying that this build will tax any team. Our issues haven't been with the hardware and getting it to work but getting our CAD software to play nice.
Our latest revision means a much more conservative 4 chip board, this simplifies our design work and time to fab prototypes, put into a 8 slot backplane for a 800 Gh/s machine that can be enclosed in a 4U size unit. We are looking at an 4 week hard date to get these units done because the EE is taking some much needed vacation time in the tropics! We are also going to do a revision after we get this initial miner done with a larger 6 chip board into the the 8 slot backplane for 1200 Gh/s machine. Multiple server PSU's will be required especially for the 1.2 Th/s rig. We are also contemplating an Ice Wasp module for cooling. We are hopeful that we will soon enough have some hardware to touch taste and feel as well as send to the Firmware team members for to work on that.
The reasoning behind a more conservative chip number per board is simply an inductance issue and where adding more chips to our design and limited space doesn't play well. We have opted for a modular design so that we can adjust board sizes accordingly but ultimately we are looking at the black arrow and future chips that will require more power in the same square footage and that means we have to make allowances in our current design for future chips without having to change too much other than the chip traces. Anyhow we are happy that some of our CAD issues seems to have cleared up and we are back on track after losing weeks and nearly a month to CAD crashes etc.
As far as the provision server and licensing we are close to having that being tested in emulated form soon as well. Our website is waiting for that to be completed and then our pool is still being tweaked and revised and we hope to have that available to public this month.
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C'mon you guys...
you do understand the difference between pre-order and in-stock, right...?
I ordered the BFL single (from the US) from "in-stock" and had it in less than 2 weeks (in the Netherlands). But yes, that was in-stock...
If you want to have the newest you'll have to go pre-order. Whether that's KnC or BFL or whatever... Bitmain is simply "lagging" in technology (but I do like their "no pre-order philosophy" et cetera, but that's a choice...)
BFL is not making anything "new" by the time it arrives on your door step 3 to 4 months from now that is being generous 300 / 600 Gh/s cards like they are proposing are losers in this market. They are way behind what is cutting edge and they can't catch up at this point particularly with the cooling they are planning. With every "new" design they are falling behind the competition that are moving towards higher density and more exotic cooling and pretty much getting mining equipment out of homes into the "cloud". 11 months of design now for the Monarch and another 3 to 4 months to get it working and shipped is way too SLOW in this game. BFL is the last company anyone should deal with and the point is not PRE-SALES vs IN STOCK. What BFL does is not PRE-SALES it is taking investors money and giving them NO equity in the company. Simply put no one in their right mind should be giving BFL money for anything. BFL is the one that LAGS in technology since when they arrive on market they are pretty much ROI black holes. |
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With the right effort and the right team this won't be a bunch of numbnutz just slapping it together. There is a lot more going for projects like this than you can estimate when looking at the first plan. I would seriously look into the use of systems like what ASICminer built in Hong Kong for cooling using Novec etc. There might also be ASIC fabricators that will produce units that are more suited to this in the coming months. I wish you guys the best. Wish I was still up in Barrie I'd be down the 400 in heartbeat to help out and invest!
I think we are still 6-12 months away from any reliable immersion/2-phase solutions for bitcoin that do not cost an arm and a leg to cool technology with only a short useful lifespan. I'd agree. The WPC are keen on being there with something that would make that "lifespan" less of a concern both in cooling and miners. Im definitely keeping an eye on the WPC. Ive got a fat mining wallet right now and am waiting for someone to bring a product at a leading price point (Bitmain at 1.45BTC is no longer relevant - should be 1.2BTC). I am hopeful that a local fab in TO or Montreal can produce what we put out there as open source. Less delay is the key in this game. |
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With the right effort and the right team this won't be a bunch of numbnutz just slapping it together. There is a lot more going for projects like this than you can estimate when looking at the first plan. I would seriously look into the use of systems like what ASICminer built in Hong Kong for cooling using Novec etc. There might also be ASIC fabricators that will produce units that are more suited to this in the coming months. I wish you guys the best. Wish I was still up in Barrie I'd be down the 400 in heartbeat to help out and invest!
I think we are still 6-12 months away from any reliable immersion/2-phase solutions for bitcoin that do not cost an arm and a leg to cool technology with only a short useful lifespan. I'd agree. The WPC are keen on being there with something that would make that "lifespan" less of a concern both in cooling and miners. |
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It will have favorite terms for the customers. Wait to see...
Unfortunately Avalon and BFL as well as others use that as a company motto and their expected shipping date. If this unit ships then all is good. |
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No, they are using Bitmine CoinCraft A1 28nm chips, not ours. TH/s grade machines based on Avalon gen3 chips will come out shortly but not now. No thanks. I'll be taking a PASS on Avalon Gen3 given the Gen1 chip debacle! |
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http://www.coindesk.com/gavin-andresen-bitcoin-companies-support-open-source/Lead developer Gavin Andresen chided the commercial bitcoin community for not getting involved enough in core bitcoin development and testing this week. In a mail to the bitcoin developers list updating the community on some bug fixes in the code, he called companies out for not giving back.
Time to give back?
But the community has to play ball, Andresen said, by helping to test the fixes out, rather than just running services on top of the latest version of the code and hoping that the team had fixed problems for them.
“Or, in other words: do not treat the core development team as if we were a commercial company that sold you a software library,” he wrote. “That is not how open source works; if you are making a profit using the software, you are expected to help develop, debug, test, and review it.” ----- And in design news we have a little Wasp P0rn, buck regulator close up we can see light at the end of the design tunnel. 
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More amateurs trying to mine in a warehouse; when will you clowns learn? The rest of the world has already figured out how to do efficient power and cooling; and they can deliver it with a critical environment team that guarantees uptime and redundancy for power and cooling. And thanks to efficiencies it costs about the same.... go with bullshit solutions and next thing you know dust and heat are going to fuck up your gear. 20kw? Are you fucking kidding me? We have nearly that much in just one cabinet. Your POE numbers in the back of a warehouse are going to suck, you'll end up spending 3x your net power cost from the utility once you try to cool things properly. Sorry to shit on your thread, but seriously take a hard look at real datacenters.
With the right effort and the right team this won't be a bunch of numbnutz just slapping it together. There is a lot more going for projects like this than you can estimate when looking at the first plan. I would seriously look into the use of systems like what ASICminer built in Hong Kong for cooling using Novec etc. There might also be ASIC fabricators that will produce units that are more suited to this in the coming months. I wish you guys the best. Wish I was still up in Barrie I'd be down the 400 in heartbeat to help out and invest! |
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